Saturday, January 21, 2012

Pest Control

I don't blog for the money, or the fame. I don't blog for the notoriety, or the whispered, "Hey, that's TheeFireWife!". Which is good, because there's pretty much none of that. I blog to share. My stories, my adventures, my crafty things, my baking success and failures.

And in that vein, I am here to share with you a most disturbing story, an adventure of as-yet-unseen proportions. At least, for the Magagnotti household.

It all started with this text from Handsome. I got it while I was out tutoring. It's the text that most girls don't want to get. The one that strikes fear into their hearts and makes them reconsider going home at all, ever again.

"Please pick up rat traps please"

My reaction: Really? Can't I just pick up some "For Sale" flyers of other homes?

Nothing but the best for our pests.Straight from Litz, PA.

First we thought "they", the authors of that awful scratching, skirtering, chittering, chattering sound, were in the attic, so we set up those bad boys.

And then they realized that "they" weren't up there at all, but were confined to one spot on one wall in our lower living room. And Handsome realized (since he'd been studying down there) that "they" had been down there, in the same said spot, all day. So he hypothesized that "they" were stuck.

Which led to the next course of treatment, Plan B, which I'm pretty sure is standard procedure in any household (at least that's what I tell myself in order to make it through the night).

We went and borrowed a TIC - Thermal Imaging Camera. Because that's what you'd do, too, right?

Seriously, I ran around the house looking at all sorts of things!It's like night vision, and "where is your house leaking heat"-seeking all in one.Sa-weet.

See that little spot of white there? That's "they". "They" were huddled up right next to the wall in the corner of a closet, on the other side of some pesky-yet-life-saving drywall. And, since this is now our place, and we're not renting, step two of Plan B: Cut a whole and trap the suckers.

NOTE: If you are cutting a hole in drywall, with the purpose of removing said hole, it's helpful to screw something into the piece before you cut around it. Gives you a handle of sorts. A nice little c-hook works pretty well.

Now, let it be noted that at this point, I'm imagining all sorts of terrible things happening. (1) Open the hole, and a rabid squirrel comes flying out at our faces. Both our faces. Simultaneously. (2) Open the hole, and the closet floods with chipmunks, just pouring down out of the hole. (3) Open the hole, and, for the first time in your life, see a non-pet rat, and it lunges at you with it's nasty, chicklet-sized teeth.

Really, any scenario that begins with "open the hole" and ends with a rodent lunging for my jugular, ran through my mind. So we open the hole...

... and H. yells at me to stop taking pictures. Honestly, he let me go a lot longer than I thought he would. So this is all the more you get to see. Which is really for the best. I was pretty scarred by the whole thing. There was some yelling, and our marriage was on the rocks for about the entire 25 minutes the "trap 'em" process took. Suffice to say, there was two of them, and a shop vac eventually had to get involved. *shudder*